Is Bitwarden making the same mistakes as LastPass?

[rrr]

Here are two articles pointing out weaknesses in Bitwarden's architecture that are very similar to those discovered with LastPass. They describe apparent weaknesses in the vault encryption architecture and the use of PBKDF2 with a relatively low iteration count for master passwords.

Bitwarden design flaw: Server side iterations

Bitwarden is a hot candidate for a LastPass replacement. Looking into how they encrypt data, it doesn’t do things that much better however.

palant.info

Improving storage of password-encrypted secrets in end-to-end encrypted apps - dchest.com Blog

dchest.com

There is also a reddit thread discussing these, in which one developer states that Bitwarden is working to address these issues. But others are saying the issues have been known for a while with no action from Bitwarden.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitwarden/comments/10jj6fk

This seems significant given that many left LastPass for Bitwarden due to LastPass's similar issues. I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts.

 

[PHolder]

I'm not sure it's possible to have a "perfect" architecture. When you share data online, you need certain features and capabilities.

 

[Lob]

I am sure that @Steve covered the fact that the secret that is the vault password hash is being hashed 100'100 times server side too:

LastPass receives the Login Hash from the user (following the default 100,100 iterations on the user’s Master Password using PBKDF2-SHA256), the Login Hash is additionally salted with a random 256-bit salt, and an additional 100,000 rounds of PBKDF2-SHA256 are performed. That output is then hashed using scrypt to increase the memory requirements of brute-force attacks. The resulting hash stored by LastPass is the output of 200,101 rounds of SHA256 + script.

Source: https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-906-notes.pdf

Bitwarden leaves less metadata in the clear - so no easy access to websites stored, for example.

What's clear is when you put all of your eggs into one basket, any flaw in that basket will put you at risk.

Bitwarden allows a max of 2 million iterations for the vault. Couple that with high entropy password and for the greater brute-forcing protection of the application layer, MFA, and you should be later in the queue to become a victim than many others.

After all, when you're being chased by a lion, you don't have to be the fastest runner, you just have to be faster than the slowest runner....